


Often Discordant, Always Joyous

by chameleon_666



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Character Death, Family, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Jaskier | Dandelion-centric, Jaskier's Giant Family, Kid Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Meet the Family, Minor Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Playing Fast and Loose With the Canon Timeline, The Pankratzes Multiply Like Rabbits Change My Mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25253896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chameleon_666/pseuds/chameleon_666
Summary: The sisters exchange looks - this boy will be loved. He will be protected, and he will be cherished, and by the gods, he will be loved.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 10
Kudos: 186





	Often Discordant, Always Joyous

i.

It’s a warm evening in the early days of summer when the Viscountess de Lettenhove gives birth to her only son, and heir to the Viscountship. The birth is an easy thing, she labours only a few hours before the babe makes his first appearance on the world stage. 

Mother and child are not alone in the grand master bedroom - the father, bewildered and teary-eyed holds his wife’s hand tightly, smoothing her hair away from her sweat-slick forehead and whispering reassurances in her ear. A gaggle of older sisters - the eldest big enough to carry the littlest on her hip, the rest hiding in her skirts - wait by the door. They’re disgusted by the mess, too fascinated to look away, and each with a remarkably strong opinion on whether the new addition ought to be another sister, or a novel brother. 

The midwife catches the new babe, and presses him to his mother’s chest. She begins to sob immediately, and the father buries his face in her hair, trembling hand ghosting over his new son’s tiny head. 

He’s called Julian. Julian Alfred, for each of his grandfathers. 

The boy howls, but the sound does not grate. He doesn’t cry - but sings, with a voice that carries clear and high throughout the whole estate. The entire village knows before the announcement is even made - the heir is born. 

The sisters exchange looks - this boy will be loved. He will be protected, and he will be cherished, and by the gods, he will be loved. 

ii.

Julian is a difficult baby, and his mother is so very tired. His wails echo around the halls of the estate as she walks him about, rocking and soothing, praying to Melitele that he’ll soon fall to sleep, that she might rest her aching back and feet. 

She sings to him. Her voice is no treasure but it serves its purpose well. It is an excellent voice for singing babies to sleep, and for making up nonsensical work songs in the kitchen, and so she loves it. Julian loves it, too. 

Tonight, it is not enough to soothe what ails him. His tiny body is hot and tense as he squirms against her, unwilling or unable to settle. The Viscountess is exhausted, and she misses her travelling husband, and she wants so badly for her Julian to suffer no longer. The motion of her pacing seems to help a little, but not enough. She cries, too. Not so loud as him, but just as impassioned, because her baby is hurting and she doesn’t know how to help him, and it’s been far too long since she slept. 

Her tears give way to sobs, ripped from her heaving chest in a duet with her son, loud and open-mouthed and terrible. 

Julian is a difficult baby, and his mother is so very, very tired. 

His eldest sister appears at her mother’s elbow then, reaching for the miserable infant. 

“Darling,” the Viscountess says through her tears, “Go back to bed.”

She shakes her head, “Mama,” she says, and reaches for Julian more insistently. She takes him under the arms, and lifts him gently from his mother’s embrace. The Viscountess lets her. She watches the boy grip fistfuls of his sister’s chestnut hair, watches the clever girl give him fingers to bite and gum. He grumbles on, wriggling and furious, but soothed. 

“Sleep, Mama,” she says, “I’ll take him into the garden.”

iii.

The estate is large, with room to play, and run, and have every sort of adventure that a child ought to. There’s a sprawling field, a lush garden, and an orchard that could have been planted specifically with the intention of making a perfect battlefield for a legendary game of hide-and-seek.

It isn’t big enough for Julian. 

The boy, old enough now to get into real trouble, has a tendency to venture into the woods, fall out of trees, and ruin his shoes in patches of swampy earth. He has a particular love for the beach - a low cliff makes up one side of the property’s border, which in turn overlooks the sea. Julian only has to tumble down this cliff twice before he learns to bring either a length of rope or a sister with him - best case scenario being both. 

The Viscountess cannot count how many times she’s had to pull the boy, spluttering and coughing up seawater, from the ocean’s current. She loses track of the scoldings she gives him, each one met by an unrepentant grin, and a dishonest promise that it won’t happen again. She can see his little fingers crossed at his side - a habit he’d picked up from the twins, and one he thought gave him full license to lie as much as he pleased. 

Each time she puts her hands on her hips, and asks, “Julian, what on earth am I going to do with you?” 

He giggles, and she sweeps him up in her arms and whisks him away for lunchtime. 

iv.

The Viscount returns from his travels weary, but with hugs and gifts for each of his children. The girls get ribbons, new dresses, dolls, and each a fine silver chain with a charm bearing their initial. 

Julian receives a sharp new set of dress clothes, a wooden toy sword, and a little tin flute. 

The dress clothes are reverently folded, and stashed away in the trunk at the end of his bed, the one that holds all of his most favourite things. Julian insists that wood swords be made for each of his sisters too - after all, what good is a weapon if you’ve no one to spar with? 

The tin flute makes horrible, screeching sounds, and the Viscountess curses her husband for bringing the wretched thing into their home. 

That is - until the man sits down with his son, and shows him how to coax real music from the thing, rather than simply blow it in his sisters’ ears to make them squeal. 

Julian learns quickly, and masters the thing in a matter of months. Before long he tires of playing the songs his father teaches him, and makes up his own. He pesters his mother into singing along - he’s always adored her voice - and bullies his eldest sister into playing her violin, the twins into accompanying with their harp and lyre respectively, and in absence of any percussion instrument, the other three girls clap and dance to keep the beat while they sing along. It becomes the family’s evening tradition, and the threat of withholding it is an excellent way to persuade Julian into eating his vegetables. 

After the evening meal, they all gather in the music room, and little Julian leads them in a symphony of often discordant, but always joyous improvisational sound. As months and years pass, the sound improves to something lovely. Sometimes so intense that tears stain the stone floors afterwards, sometimes so lilting and merry that it all dissolves into giggles and laughter. 

The next time the Viscount leaves on business, he brings a new instrument back for his son to experiment with. A lute - small enough for the young boy to get his hands around, which is insulting, because Julian wants a  _ real _ lute, not a little toy for children. The Viscount obliges his son, and commissions a full size instrument from a craftsman in the village. Julian takes to it as a fish to water, delighting in the fact that unlike with the flute, he can sing while he plays. 

v.

Julian is quite small for his age, right up until the moment that he isn’t. He’s late to grow, but when he starts, the Viscountess wonders whether he’ll ever stop. He looks quite awkward for some time, a fact that Julian is both keenly aware and horribly embarrassed of. His ears and feet grow first, then he stretches out, spindly and gangly. He evokes the image of a fawn freshly born and just learning to keep it’s legs beneath it. The cooks can scarcely prepare food quickly enough to keep him happily fed and sated. The tailor can barely sew fast enough to keep him clothed.

The day that Julian’s voice finally, properly breaks is the best of his life - he’s spent the last year or so in a constant state of sounding ill, as if he’s nearly lost his voice, and it’s made him quite miserable. His voice sputters out and fails when he tries to sing too high, but is not yet capable of the rich baritone his father brags. It jumps around and falters and squeaks without an ounce of his permission, try as he may to wrangle it into something pleasing. 

When the Viscount and Viscountess wake one morning to the sound of a warm, clear tenor voice flooding their halls like golden sunlight, they smile at each other, and go to congratulate their son.

Very soon after, Julian begins to inquire after formal schooling. Now that the shame of his awkward growth has mostly passed and he’s more man-shaped than boy-shaped, he’s eager to venture into the world, discover all that it has to offer, and all that he might offer it. 

The Viscount, until this point steward and overseer of his son’s education, is surprised at this development. Even coaxing the boy to sit still long enough to entertain the  _ idea _ of reading a book is a battle lost before it’s begun. Now here he is - begging at his father’s knee to be sent away to Oxenfurt. 

“Why, Julian,” he jokes, “Have you already grown sick of your poor family? Would you not miss us?”

“I promise I’ll miss you dearly,” Julian says, “If only you’ll give me the chance.”

The Viscount knows he can only teach his ambitious son so much. He’s passed on all he knows of politics, and history, and life. He’s taught Julian to use his wits rather than his fists, taught him to be curious and clever, taught him to play a little tin flute. The Viscount has little left to give - no great amount of skill in the wordsmithing that Julian has of late taken a keen interest in, no skill in the realm of music beyond what is nurtured by the private concerts they hold each evening. 

It’s expected, even that he will send his son away to be formally educated. He is to inherit, after all, it would do for him to be well-read. 

Even as it pains him to part from Julian, the Viscount makes the arrangements for him to study. 

On the eve of his departure, the entire family gathers in the formal dining hall of the Lettenhove estate to wish Julian well. There’s music, wine, and fine food. The Viscount and Viscountess regale them all with embarrassing tales of childhood mishap, and there is much laughter. 

Julian debuts a new song then, one he’s written for the family. His mother, his father, each of his sisters, and all of his young nieces and nephews receive a verse of their own, and so it is an almost outrageously long song. But he explains - he just couldn’t leave anyone out. Everyone holds an equal spot in his heart, and so must hold the same within the song.

The Viscountess is near inconsolable the next morning as Julian prepares to embark on the next chapter of his life. She sobs in her son’s arms, leaning her head on his chest. He’s so much taller than her now. Her baby is grown, holding  _ her _ instead of the opposite. She remembers rocking him, bouncing him on her hip, chasing him out of trouble, berating him for wrestling with his sisters. He was so little, so precious to her. The last of her babies, now all grown and taller than her. Taller than all of his sisters, too, which none of them had appreciated much. 

“My Julian,” she says, reaching up to touch his sweet cheek. 

“Jaskier,” he corrects her, and she smiles.

“My Jaskier.”

vi.

Jaskier does well at school. He writes to his family often, and does his best to make them proud. He finds many new diversions, finds that love is a beautiful thing, and that he is very good at it. There are so many new people to meet, foods to try, instruments to learn. Jaskier discovers  _ poetry, _ and is enamoured. He writes a poem for his mother, and one for each of his sisters. He makes his father very proud by acquiring an arch-nemesis. Jaskier is scolded soundly when he requests money from the family coffers to hire an assassin and do away with the scoundrel. 

Jaskier is the bane of his professors, and the Viscount receives many letters from Oxenfurt written not by his son, but by them - the supposed professionals whom he is paying a great deal of money to educate his son. The issues they seem to take with Jaskier - that he is defiant, overly curious, and with a poor work ethic - seem to him failings on their part, not his son’s. Were these so-called-great men  _ truly _ great, they’d have not made rules so silly that Jaskier felt compelled to break them. They’d be able to sate his curiosity, not condemn it, and they’d have the charisma to keep him engaged. 

As part of final examinations, there is a concert put on at the end of each academic term, that the young new bards might flaunt their growing talent and show their professors how their studies have paid off. For each of these events, the entire Pankratz family makes the journey to Oxenfurt. There are so many of them that they take up an entire row of seats in the amphitheatre, by the time the nieces and nephews and in-laws have filed in alongside the Viscount and Viscountess and the sisters. 

After each concert, Jaskier leads his family around the city, looking more like a tour guide than a student. They’ll find a tavern to commandeer, and the entire clan will take their supper. Then they all gather ‘round to continue the nightly tradition of song - complete now they have Jaskier to lead them. Jaskier plays his lute and sings with his mother and sisters, the twins strum their lyre and harp, his eldest sister on her violin, father on flute. Only now, there are a dozen tiny feet stamping out uneven and off-kilter beats on the tavern floor, voices of untrained in-laws joining in hesitant at first, but with drink and time growing loud and boisterous. 

It takes almost no time at all to get the entire tavern singing along, and if someone’s got an instrument to contribute - all the better. The more the merrier, the Pankratzes always say. 

Jaskier sees them all off the next morning, kisses and big hugs for all. 

vii.

Jaskier graduates as valedictorian to great fanfare, and the first thing he does as an educated adult is turn down a contract to teach. 

The Viscount and Viscountess think this means he will come home now, and settle into his inheritance. 

They discover that what this actually means is that Jaskier will travel the continent, searching for adventure, heroics, heartbreak, and a story to tell. 

He doesn’t go home after graduation at all, but sends a letter. In it, he explains why he’s done what he has, that he will be home to winter, and that he loves all of them more dearly than he has words to say - but that he will try. He tries for four more pages, before ending by saying - 

_ Oh, sod it. You already know.  _

They do. 

That summer, Jaskier meets a Witcher. He loves Geralt almost straight away, and Geralt does not want him to. But Jaskier has so much love to give, and he’s always been a bit difficult. He vows to follow the Witcher, to make the rest of the world see him the way he does. 

When the song reaches Kerack, the Pankratzes know immediately that it is his. 

Jaskier sends a letter a short time later telling them all how the story really went, and all about his Witcher. 

He tells Geralt all about his family. He tells him about the singing, and the mischief he and the twins always managed to find, how he’d sat in his eldest sister’s lap when he was upset until he got too big to do so, and then she sat in his lap. He tells Geralt about the gaggle of nieces and nephews who he’d chase around the garden, playing until the sun dipped low and they were called inside for dinner. He describes the half-dozen weddings he’s been to, and how were he ever to marry, he’d like to elope and surprise them all, just to see the looks on their faces. 

“Have you got any family, Geralt?”

“Brothers.”

“Lucky! I always wanted a brother. My parents really ought to have kept going after me, I’ve always thought, they were finally getting good at it.”

Jaskier teases smiles from Geralt when he asks about the other Witchers - his brothers. His childhood was rougher and sharper than Jaskier’s, and he breaks off in the middle of some stories when he realizes that they won’t sound nearly so happy to anyone who’d grown up outside of the keep. Jaskier treasures each memory Geralt shares, holds it close to his lovelorn heart.

When he is away traveling, Jaskier misses his family fiercely, and writes often. He spends his winters curled up under his mother’s arm by the hearth, warm and happy with a full belly and heart. 

That first winter, the Viscount and Viscountess are startled at the sight of their son. They almost don’t recognize him - dirty and thin as he is from his months of travel. They have him fed and bathed soon enough, and Jaskier is more than happy to be pampered for a while. 

The first time Jaskier brings a woman home for the season and tells them all he intends to wed her, they believe him. 

The fourth time, they do not. 

The first winter he misses is the eleventh since graduating, and it’s a bad one. The Viscountess weeps when she thinks the others cannot hear. She thinks her baby dead, or else finally taken from her by marriage without so much as a letter to let her know. When Jaskier finally writes, the estate itself breathes a sigh of relief. Jaskier is safe, he is cared for, he is with the Witchers at their keep and will not be able to write again until the spring, but wishes them all well. 

That winter, Jaskier learns Geralt’s family. His brothers, who adopt him as one of their own, his father, who gives his silent, stoic approval to the two of them. It’s a very different winter from the ones Jaskier knows - this is animal furs and stone walls and hard liquor and swordplay to keep the blood pumping. There are old books that smell of rot, and huge, roaring fires. He learns to cook that winter, spending many an afternoon in the kitchen. Jaskier is the only one with an instrument, but by spring he has them all singing. 

After they disembark Kaer Morhen, they stay a few days in a nearby town that Jaskier might write to his family and wait for a letter back. He learns that he is an uncle again - and again. His father fell ill in the harsh cold, but is recovering well. 

Jaskier asks Geralt whether next winter, they might stay over at the Lettenhove estate. 

Geralt tells him it’s about time he got to meet all these freaks he keeps hearing so much about. 

viii.

When Jaskier brings his Witcher home for the season, and tells them all that he intends to wed him, they believe him. 

The Viscount and Viscountess, all of Jaskier’s sisters and their husbands and wives and children like Geralt very much, to Jaskier’s great joy and Geralt’s great confusion. He doesn’t understand, not yet. The Pankratz family has so much love to give that they couldn’t care less what kind of brute Geralt is. That Jaskier loves him is all they need to know, and he’s a part of the family. They love him completely and wholly. 

The Viscountess sits with Geralt in companionable silence when he desires, and when he desires she shows him to the library, and the stables, and the kitchen. Geralt finds that while the woman is boisterous as her kin when she’s near them, when it’s only the two of them, she is quiet and thoughtful, and willing to entertain his philosophical musings the same as Jaskier is. The Viscountess, for her part, delights in her time spent with the Witcher, finding him polite and smart. 

The Viscount takes Geralt riding, and they hunt game together. Geralt is very fond of the hunting dogs he keeps, and the Viscount is very fond of Geralt’s keen and near infallible sense for tracking. They return with game bags heavy with prey - enough to eat like kings, and distribute the rest to the needy in the village. 

It’s another three years before they wed, an out of the blue elopement, private and small like Jaskier always wanted. It surprises everyone as much as he’d hoped, and they all insist on having a big party when summer, and their anniversary, comes around. Geralt pretends not to enjoy the affection and attention, Jaskier revels in it. 

ix.

One summer, years later, the Viscountess receives an interesting letter from her son. 

Jaskier explains, in the letter, that he and his Witcher have been on a rather taxing hunt for a dragon, and he wonders whether the summer house is available for guests - the two of them would quite like to get away for a while and rest, and the coast seems the perfect place to do it. 

The Viscountess writes back immediately, that  _ yes, _ of course they can come home. The letter is short, but oh, she is  _ excited. _ She immediately sends for the summer house to be cleaned and prepared, made up with fine linens and the pantry stocked with preserves. Remembering a conversation she’d had with Geralt the prior winter, she sends one of the older, less active of her husband’s hunting dogs to keep the bed warm until they arrive. 

Jaskier looks greyer than she remembered when she sees him, and she supposes by the look in his eye that she must as well. He’s wearing a very smart salt and pepper beard that makes him look near identical to his father at that age. She knows her own hair has gone completely white, and with grandchildren grown enough to bear little ones of their own, it’s no wonder. The Witcher looks young as ever, and neither she nor her son hesitate to let him know just how unfair that is. 

The Viscount has trouble getting around now, and likes to stay reclined in his study while he works. Hearing that his son is home, he all but runs to greet him. 

The sisters and spouses and nieces and nephews and grand-nieces and grand-nephews all assemble that night, so many in their number now that they have to move outside, and put three long tables together to accommodate everyone. Jaskier, amidst complaints about his knees, chases the little ones around the garden as enthusiastically as he had when he was a teenager. There is food, and wine, and song - loud and messy and beautiful as their family is. It’s a homecoming feast to befit a king. 

There’s a bonfire after night falls, and the elders retire to bed. 

Geralt holds Jaskier close, and in the privacy of the firelight, says -

“Thank you.”

“For what, darling?”

“For sharing this.”

They stay in the summer house long after the season ends, through autumn, and move to the main house when winter falls. 

It’s another bad winter, and the Viscount succumbs to illness once more. This time, he does not recover. The Viscountess, in her grief, follows her husband shortly thereafter. 

She passes peacefully, in her bed, the beloved matriarch surrounded by the large and unwieldy extended Pankratz family. Jaskier and his sisters sit in the bed with her, he holds her thin hand, and for the last time - they all sing together. 

The Viscountess raises a shaking hand, and places it against her son’s sweet, tearstained cheek. 

“My Julian.”

x.

Jaskier cedes the Viscountship to his eldest sister and her husband, and he and his Witcher travel once more. There is destiny to be forged, and new family to be found, and many more stories waiting to be told. 

A hundred stories, a hundred songs. A million. 

And when Jaskier slows, tires, and the ache in his bones becomes too much, there is a warm bed, and a house full of people who love him waiting to welcome he and his Witcher home. 

**Author's Note:**

> I do Not care for the canon timeline where Jaskier is concerned, so I've decided to disregard it. As such, he's a little older than he strictly should be when he goes away to school, and therefore for every event after. If things feel funky time-wise, that's the reason. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you've enjoyed! Come chat over on tumblr [@tristranthorne](https://tristranthorne.tumblr.com/)!


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